The Confidential Agent (20 page)

‘What are you going to do?'

‘I'm taking you home, for a talk.'

‘What do you mean, “home”?' But D. had no more to say, as they bumped slowly on across the Park. The soap-box orators talked in the bitter cold at Marble Arch with their mackintoshes turned up around their Adam's apples, and all down the road the cad cars waited for the right easy girls, and the cheap prostitutes sat hopelessly in the shadows, and the blackmailers kept an eye open on the grass where the deeds of darkness were quietly and unsatisfactorily accomplished. This was technically known as a city at peace. A poster said: ‘Bloomsbury Tragedy Sensation.'

[2]

The fight was out of Mr K. He left the taxi without a word and went on down the basement steps. D. turned up the light in the little bed-sitting-room and lit the gas; bending over the fire with the match between his fingers, he wondered whether he was really about to commit a murder. It seemed hard luck on Glover, whoever she might be: a person's home had a kind of innocency. When a house-front gave way before an explosion and showed the iron bed, the chairs, the hideous picture and the chamber-pot, you had a sense of rape: intrusion into a stranger's home was an act of lust. But you were driven always to copy what your enemy did. You dropped the same bombs: you broke up the same private lives. He turned with sudden fury on Mr K. and said, ‘You've asked for this.'

Mr K. backed against the divan, sat down. Above his head was a small bookshelf with a few meagre books in limp morocco bindings – the inconsiderable library of a pious woman. He said, ‘I swear to you, I wasn't there.'

‘You don't deny – do you? – that you and she planned to get my papers.'

‘You were superseded.'

‘I know all that.' He came close up to him; this was the moment for the blow in the face, the worked-up rage: they had shown him the other day how a man was beaten up. But he couldn't do it. To touch K. at all was to start a relationship . . . his mouth quivered in distaste. He said, ‘Your only chance of getting out alive is to be frank. They bought you both, didn't they?'

Mr K.'s glasses dropped on the divan: he felt for them over the art needle-work cover. He said, ‘How were we to know you had not sold out?'

‘There was no way, was there?' D. said.

‘They didn't trust you – or why should we have been employed?'

He listened with his fingers on the gun. If you were the jury as well as the judge – the attorney too – you had to give every chance: you had to be fair even if the whole world was biased. ‘Go on.'

Mr K. was encouraged. His pink-rimmed eyes peered up, trying to focus; he moved the muscles of his mouth into a teasing smile. He said, ‘And then, of course, you did behave oddly – didn't you? How could we tell that you wouldn't sell at a price?'

‘True.'

‘Everyone has to look after himself. If you had sold – we should have got nothing.'

It was a rather dreadful revelation of human depravity. Mr K. had been more bearable when he was frightened, cringing. . . . Now his courage was coming back. He said, ‘It's no good being left behind. After all, there's no hope.'

‘No hope?'

‘You've only to read the paper to-night. We are beaten. Why, you know yourself how many Ministers have ratted. You don't think they are getting nothing, do you?'

‘I wonder what you got.'

Mr K. found his glasses and shifted on the divan. Fear had almost entirely left him; he had a look of old and agile cunning. He said, ‘I thought sooner or later we'd come to that.'

‘It would be best to tell me everything.'

‘If you want a cut,' Mr K. said, ‘you won't get it. Not even if I wanted . . .'

‘Surely you haven't been foolish enough to sell for credit?'

‘They knew better than to offer – to a man like me – money.'

D. was at a loss. He said incredulously, ‘You mean you've got nothing out of it?'

‘What I've got is in writing. Signed by L.'

‘I never thought you were quite such a fool. If it were only promises you wanted, you could have had as many from us.'

‘This isn't a promise. It's an appointment. Signed by the Chancellor. You know L.'s the Chancellor now. That would be since your time.' He sounded positively at ease again.

‘Chancellor of what?'

‘The University, of course. I have been made a professor. I am on the Faculty. I can go home again.'

D. laughed, he couldn't help it, but there was disgust behind the laughter. This was to be the civilisation of the future, the scholarship of the future. . . . He said, ‘It's a comfort to think, if I kill you, I'm killing Professor K.' He had a hideous vision of a whole world of poets, musicians, scholars, artists – in steel-rimmed spectacles with pink eyes and old treacherous brains – the survivals of an antique worn-out world teaching the young the useful lessons of treachery and dependence. He took out the secretary's gun. He said, ‘I wonder who they'll appoint in your place.' But he knew they had hundreds to choose from.

‘Don't play about with a gun like that. It's dangerous.'

D. said, ‘If you were at home now, you would be put on trial by a military court and sentenced. Why do you think you ought to escape here?'

‘You're joking,' Mr K. said, trying to laugh.

D. opened the revolver: there were two shots in it.

Mr K. said frantically, ‘You said if I hadn't killed the girl, I'd be safe . . .'

‘Well?' He closed the breach again.

‘I didn't kill her. I only telephoned to Marie . . .'

‘Marie? Oh yes, the manageress. Go on.'

‘L. told me to. He rang me up from the Embassy. He said, “Just tell her – do what you can.”'

‘And you didn't know what that meant?'

‘Not exactly. How could I? I only knew she had a plan . . . to get you deported. She never meant it to look like murder. It was when the police read the diary . . . it all fitted in. There was what you said – about taking her away.'

‘You know a lot.'

‘Marie told me – afterwards. It all came to her like a revelation. She had meant to frame a robbery. And then the girl, you see, was insolent. She just thought she'd give her a scare, and then she lost her temper. You know she has an awful temper, and no control. No control at all.' He tried again that testing smile. ‘It's only one girl,' he said, ‘out of thousands. They die every day at home. It's war.' Something in D.'s face made him add too quickly, ‘That was how Marie argued it.'

‘And what did you say?'

‘Oh, I was against it.'

‘Before it happened – you were against it?'

‘Yes. No, no, I mean . . . afterwards. When I saw her afterwards.'

D. said, ‘It won't hold water. You knew all along.'

‘I swear I wasn't there . . .'

‘Oh, I believe you. You wouldn't have the nerve. That was left to her.'

‘It's
her
you want.'

‘I've got a prejudice,' D. said, ‘against killing women. But she'll suffer all right, when you are found dead. . . . She'll be left wondering . . . listening to sounds. . . . Besides, I've only two bullets. And I don't know how to get more.' He put up the safety catch.

‘This is England,' the little grey man shrieked as if he wanted to convince himself. He started to his feet and knocked a book off the shelf – it fell open upon the divan – a little book of devotional verse with “God” in capital letters. Certainly it was England – England was the divan, the waste-paper basket made out of old flower prints, the framed Speed map and the cushions: the alien atmosphere plucked at D.'s sleeve, urged him to desist. He said furiously, ‘Get off that divan.'

Mr K. got up tremulously. He said, ‘You'll let me go?'

Years of academic life might make one a good judge: it didn't make one a good executioner.

‘Why not L.?' Mr K. implored him.

‘Oh, I'll deal with L. one day. But he isn't one of us.' The distinction was real; you couldn't feel the same rage towards a museum piece.

Mr K. thrust out his ink-stained hands with an air of pleading. He said, ‘You couldn't blame me if you knew. The life I've had. Oh, they write books about slavery.' He began to cry. ‘You pity
her
, but it's me,' he said, ‘it's me . . .' Words failed him.

‘Get back through that door,' D. said. The bathroom couldn't be seen from outside. It had ventilation but no window. The hand which held the gun shook with the impending horror. They had pushed him around . . . it was his turn now, but fear was returning – the fear of other people's pain, their lives, their individual despairs. He was damned like a creative writer to sympathy. . . . He said, ‘Go on. Hurry,' and Mr K. began to stumble back. D. raked his mind for any heartless joke – ‘We haven't got a cemetery wall . . .' but it petered out. You could only joke about your own death. Other people's deaths were important.

Mr K. said, ‘She hadn't lived through what I had . . . fifty-five years of it. . . . And then to have only six months more, and no hope at all.'

D. tried not to listen, didn't in any case understand. He followed Mr K., with the gun held before him, with revulsion.

‘If you had only six months, wouldn't you choose a little comfort . . . ?' The glasses slipped off his nose and smashed. He said ‘respect' with a sob. He said, ‘I always dreamt one day . . . the university.' He was in the bathroom now, staring blindly where he supposed D. to be, backing towards the basin. ‘And then the doctor said six months . . .' He gave a yelp of mournful anguish like a dog . . . ‘die in harness . . . with that fool in Oxford Street . . . “bona matina,” “bona matina” . . . cold . . . the radiator's never on.' He was raving now – the first words which came into his head as if he had a sense that as long as he talked he was safe; and any words which emerged from that tormented and embittered brain couldn't help but carry the awful impress of the little office, the cubicle, the cold radiator, the roller picture on the wall: ‘un famil gentilbono.' He said, ‘The old man creeping round on rubber soles . . . I'd get the pain . . . had to apologise in Entrenationo . . . or else the fine . . . no cigarettes for a week.' With every word he came alive . . . and the condemned must not come alive: he must be dead long before the judge passes sentence. ‘Stop!' D. said. Mr K.'s head switched round like a tortoise's. The blind eyes had got the direction wrong. ‘Can you blame me?' he said. ‘Six months at home . . . a professor . . .' D. shut his eyes and pressed the trigger. The noise took him by surprise and the kick of the gun: glass smashed, and somewhere a bell rang.

He opened his eyes: he had missed: he must have missed. The mirror of the basin was smashed a foot away from Mr K.'s old head. Mr K. was on his feet blinking, with a look of perplexity . . . somebody was knocking on the door. One bullet gone.

D. said, ‘Don't move. Don't make a sound. I won't miss twice,' and shut the door. He was alone by the divan again, listening to the knock, knock on the area door. If it were the police what was he to do with his only bullet? There was silence again everywhere else. The little book lay open on the divan:

The absurd poem was like a wax impress on his brain. He didn't believe in God, he had no home: it was like the incantation of a savage tribe which has an effect on even the most civilised beholder. Knock! Knock! Knock! and then a ring again. Was it one of the owner's friends, the owner herself? No, she would have a key. It must be the police.

He moved slowly across the room, gun in hand. He had forgotten the gun just as he had forgotten the razor. He opened the door like a doomed man.

It was Rose.

He said slowly, ‘Of course. I forgot. I gave you my address, didn't I?' He looked over her shoulder as if he expected to see the police – or Forbes.

She said, ‘I came to tell you what Furt said.'

‘Oh yes, yes.'

She said, ‘You haven't done anything, have you – wild?'

‘No.'

‘Why the gun?'

‘I thought you might be the police.'

They came into the room and shut the area door. He had his eye on the bathroom. It was no good, he knew now he would never shoot. He might be a good judge, but he would never make an executioner. War toughened you but not to that extent: he carried around his neck like a dead albatross the lectures in Romance, the Song of Roland, the Berne MS.

She said, ‘My dear – how strange you look! Younger.'

‘The moustache . . .'

‘Of course. It suits you like that.'

He said impatiently, ‘What did Furt say?'

‘They've signed.'

‘But it's against your own law.'

‘They haven't signed a contract direct with L. You can always get round the law. The coal will go by Holland . . .'

He had a sense of complete failure; he wasn't even capable of shooting a traitor. She said, ‘You'll have to go. Before the police find you.' He sat on the divan with the gun hanging between his knees. He said, ‘And Forbes signed too?'

‘You can't blame him.' Again he felt the odd prick of jealousy. She said, ‘He doesn't like it.'

‘Why?'

She said, ‘You know he's honest, in a way. You can trust him when the wind's blowing east.'